Friday, 11 December 2009

Here are some examples from photographer Jane Hilton's work Dead Eagle Trail, which excitingly will be in book form early next year, and also will be exhibited in the gallery in its entirety in April 2010, so watch this space....

Friday, 4 December 2009

28 Stories if the MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Graduate Degree Show at LCC, it opens next week, It runs from the 10th - 23rd December, and then the 4th to the 15th January 2010, and is sure to be well worth a look. More information can be found here...The picture below is by Poulomi Basu from the series To Conquer Her Land...Also on the 9th December David Campbell, Telegraph Picture editor Lucy Davies and Photographers Ed Kashi and Simon Norfolk will be discussing The New Ecology of Photojournalism from 6pm.From the series Tsang's Odyssey by Lee Wing Ki

Monday, 16 November 2009

Recently New Zealand Photographer Bruce Connew was over in London with lots of new work, and new books (all of which are well worth seeing. One of these little books is I Saw You, 2006-2007 and here is what Bruce says about the work….:“For twelve months, from the top floor of home, veiled behind an apron of black velvet, through double-glazing and a long lens, I photographed the comings and goings of a car park, an ample piece of reclaimed Wellington land that juts out into a bay, a family beach to one side…”“Surveillance is routine nowadays. It’s everywhere. We’ve come to expect it; we’ve even come to embrace it. It promises social order. It makes us feel safer. Its premise is creepy….”“I peered in on people’s lives, sneaked up on their susceptibilities as they busied themselves mostly in ordinary ways, minding their own business and perhaps a little of yours, when they could reasonably expect no one to be watching — private moments in a public space. Then I took away some of their identity and shuffled them together. …” Bruce Connew

Thursday, 12 November 2009

The Quest for the Man on the White Donkey is the title of a piece of work that photographer Yaakov Israel has been working on since 2002, the title refers to belief that in the Jewish tradition the Messiah will arrive riding a white donkey.... Below are just a few examples of the work and Yaakov in his own words...:"A few years ago, as I was taking photographs near the Dead Sea a Palestinian man rode past me on his white donkey...It is after having developed this plate that I’ve realize that I had encountered my “Messiah”; this meeting brought me to initiate the body of work that carries the name: “The quest for the man on the white donkey”....""The American tradition of the great photographic journeys served as a blueprint for the initial phase of the “quest”: with the definitive difference that in such a small Country the size of the territory in which my hunt was pursued would have shaped my proceedings. ...What otherwise in the documentary photography genre spans over months of continuous traveling, was confronted with a territory in which no matter what destination I had chosen it would have brought me back home by midnight the latest....""Then, as I’ve found myself passing through same places over and over again, the personal identity of my project was revealed: I had to let go the idea of narrating the physical journey itself but rather concentrate on the intimate, emotional reactions to those places; how I was reacting to the occasional encounters with people and scenarios...""As my “Messenger” revealed himself, the search for a deeper understanding of my Country and what defines me as an Israeli became an urge to look for the in-between places, the non-usual; suddenly a detail requested my attention as I stood for hours waiting for a meaning to reveal itself: or pushed me away, puzzled. But in the end I had to hold to it. I cannot let go until that detail is made mine, until the allusive and enigmatic find their place in my understanding of what I deem as authentic, real....." Yaakov IsraelClick here to see Yaakov's website...

Tuesday, 27 October 2009

A great quote from the legendary John Morris:"The Picture Editor is the voyeurs' voyeur, the person who sees what the photographers themselves have seen but in the bloodless realm of the contact sheet... and now pixels on the screen. Picture Editors find the representative picture, the image that will be seen by others perhaps around the world. they are unwitting (or witting, as the case may be) tastemakers, the unnapointed guardians of morality, the talent brokers, the accomplices to celebrity. Most important - or disturbing - they are the fixers of 'reality and of 'history'.".......John G Morris

Monday, 26 October 2009

Last Saturday during the Cultivate Reviews (Organized by the Rhubarb folk) held at LCC I was lucky enough to see the work of Dave Wyatt, Dave recently finished his MA at Dalian Medical University in Dalian, North East China. He showed me a couple of projects, the following images are from Captive, images from Dalian Forest Zoo..."Our relationship with the natural environment has always been a fragile one and this is best exemplified by our need to encage and exhibit animals in zoos. On the one hand, zoos offer a valid opportunity for education for the young to learn about the animals they cannot see and yet their future actions serve to protect...."By seeing these animals in the flesh it helps people relate to the animals they hear about in the wild facing extinction unless they adapt their consumption....""On the other hand holding any animal captive, including the process of breeding them for captivity surely cannot be argued to be anything but morally corrupt....""The portraits of the animals of Dalian Forest Zoo presented in this project depict not only the physical and mental situation of the zoo’s inhabitants but also allude to how the Chinese people are embracing the rapid transformation of their country. Importantly the work also addresses my own feelings of isolation living in a country as foreign as China for someone of British origin. This isolation I felt on an individual level is very similar to how the Chinese as a population feel as a country that only within the past 30 years since the end of the cultural revolution is starting to find its own voice in the world..." Dave Wyatt

Thursday, 22 October 2009

Excitingly David Gray's new book is available,again from the series The Dreams That Day Break and I should have copies in the gallery very soon, as usual they come with a 10"x8" print are are typical of David's Fictitious photographic story telling..."Thunderbolts Way is both real and imagined. It straddles the last fewkilometres of the habitable interior of New South Wales, a place where softtarmac dives for cover under the hot tundra of red dust and parched grass.Where global capital meets the Kelly gang legend, where Melbourne Cupwinners are bred and a gambler’s dreams begin...." David Gray

Monday, 12 October 2009

Here are some examples of Caroline Molloy’s work in progress from India:"Over a number of visits I have been researching and photographing traditional photographic studios in Kerela, which were once an integral part of the venacular language of studio photography, steeped in both tradition and a colonial history.With the introduction of modern technology, they are now rapidly becoming remnants of a time gone by...."These static pictorial spaces, now more or less ornamental, were symbolic of an idealised ‘fantasy’ background and a preferred space to record the ‘inspirational’ portraits. My intention is for the spaces void of sitter to act as a portrait in their own right.."

Friday, 9 October 2009

I greatly recommend going to see an exhibition that opened last night at Seventeen Gallery in London, its a show by artist David Raymond Conroy entitled It Was Part of It Before. And Now. Not exclusively Photography by any means but the work brings up some interesting thoughts regarding the re contextualizing of imagery... Well worth a look.... The Piece below is titled A History of Photography

Wednesday, 7 October 2009

David Moore is most recently known for his project The Last Things, which became a book published by Dewi Lewis and also a touring show, recently though I came across another earlier project Planes, The below excerpt is an edited version of what David writes on his website here:

“I flew into New York JFK airport from London on the 10th of September 2001, arriving around 10 pm. An electrical storm lumbered and raged as cabs poured passengers into Manhattan leaving a wash of recent storm water flooding the sidewalks all the way downtown. It was warm with flickers of cool air and the unpredictable atmosphere was brought closer by jet lag and the bewilderment of stepping off a seven hour flight into this.

After 9/11, I stayed on in the city for ten days not photographing much at all, it didn’t feel like my job and there was too much of that going on already. I returned to London late September then went back again to New York in early November; Though the city smelt the same as it did in late September, all fused electrics and burning dust, everything was different.

Back in London; and continuing to this date, I have made more and more photographs of these planes, generally from the same place, and at the same time of year, near where I used to live in East London. The holding pattern on ‘westerly operations’, takes all incoming Heathrow aircraft over Hackney, Islington, The City, Westminster and most everywhere else over London and its populace.

The aircraft in these photographs, their altitude, fragility and commercial purpose, their routes over our lives, now offer us an altogether more ambivalent identity. The most banal yet beautiful modern objects.

Tuesday, 6 October 2009

22 players, no spectators and maybe a horse in the next meadow....It has been well over a year in the making but finally and excitingly Hans van der Meer's show at HOST is upon us, we open the show on the 22nd October and on the 23rd Hans will be giving a talk about the work...

Wednesday, 30 September 2009

In the latest issue of Lens Culture there is a heap of quotes by writer and photographer Bill Jay, proving again just what a genius guy he is, here are just a few favorites:"Art is not democratic; if millions take bad pictures they are still bad."

"A photograph is a mirror; mostly it reflects the prejudice of the of the viewer."

"Why do photographers photograph? to make unreality Visible."

"Artists are individualists who copy each other."

And the best:"Photography is pointing at things while skiing in a straight jacket."

Here is just a mention of an interesting show that opens next week, three photographers work under the title Interior Politics its at Sixty Seven A , Dalston, London, E8 2NG.The opening is Thursday the 8th October 6pm and there is more info here...:Anna Leader:Bella FenningAmy Gwatkin:

Wednesday, 16 September 2009

I recently got an interesting card in the post from photographer Ross Mantle, and have been looking at his work in progress entitled In Wake of an American Dream, here are some examples but more can be seen here....